Supports Begich

To the editor:

It does us no good to have two Republican Senators. What we need to do is to make sure that no matter which party controls the Senate, we have somebody with seniority on the appropriations committee. That means re-electing Mark Begich, because when the Democrats control the Senate, he has seniority and is Alaska’s champion in the majority on the appropriations committee.

I have no problem with Begich and Murkowski voting the same way 80 percent of the time: that means that 80 percent of the time, Alaska has two votes. What’s the point of having senators who vote opposite each other all the time? When they do that, they cancel out each other’s votes and Alaskans have no effective voice at all! Let’s not let outsiders and party bosses con us into doing something that is more beneficial to them than to us Alaskans.

This election is not about President Barack Obama. Obama is history; he’s on the way out. He has only two years left. This election is about Alaska’s future, about the next 6 years; it’s about what will happen after Obama is gone.

As to how Begich left the Municipality of Anchorage: when was the last time Anchorage elected a new mayor who did not go all Henny Penny and cry that the sky was falling and that they had inherited a huge budget deficit? Come on folks, let’s not fall for that one!

Some people are all about the “show”; they’re all talk and no go. That’s not Senator Begich. He works. Hard. For Alaska. And he’s no dummy. He’s well on his way to becoming a heavyweight in the Senate, like U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens was.

Alaskans wisely re-elected Sen. Stevens many times and reaped huge benefits from the power that seniority gave him. Let’s not throw away the six years of seniority we have already invested in Sen. Begich. We need to keep our bases covered in the Senate and have one senator from each party. We need to re-elect Senator Mark Begich.

Anne Kilkenny

Wasilla